2010 Honda Accord Crosstour: Screen Theme

December 02, 2010

In a recent post on our long-term Sonata, I noted that its screen was one of the best in the segment -- far outpacing the ones in the Accord or Camry. Well, I made a point to snag the keys to our Accord Crosstour last night to get a real comparison. Here's what I came up with.

The Crosstour's screen is mostly held back by its lack of resolution. The coarseness of the pixels give it an outdated look, but the information is still quite legible. I'm quite pleased with the layout and the menus are intuitive. Also, I like how you can change the color scheme -- as shown in the animated slides above. I'm partial to the red, but it clashes with the cool blue instrument panel.

This morning, I decided to see what a higher-resolution screen might look like in Photoshop. The before and after results are shown below.

Then it got me thinking. Before I jumped headfirst into automotive journalism, I was a graphic designer. One of my clients was in the home theater/automation business and one of the projects involved designing custom graphics for a Crestron controller. The client was a super wealthy Ferrari collector, so we wanted to give the screen a definite Ferrari vibe.

How does this apply to the Crosstour? Well, what if it were possible to upload you own personalized menus and graphics to your car? Not just the color scheme, but the typeface and menu layout. It would probably be produced via a web-based program where you could upload images, assign buttons and give it a preview test run. Perhaps you could download it to a thumb drive or CD-R then upload it to the vehicle. Maybe there would be a marketplace where users could share their designs. Imagine the possibilities!